Slow ad sales test new boss at Giant Step

Baby steps: Steve Weinswig will consider it a good year for Giant Step if the online advertising unit of BCom3 Group Inc. matches last year's revenues.

Managing growth used to be the toughest part about running Giant Step, BCom3 Group Inc.'s interactive advertising unit. Now, it's managing expectations.

That's the big challenge facing Steve Weinswig, who took over as Chicago-based Giant Step's president late last month. The agency is still recovering from the hangover from last year's Internet frenzy, and it has found that clients are closing their wallets on Internet marketing initiatives.

"We've seen that we need to be a little more aggressive now," says Mr. Weinswig, 36.

With the weak advertising market, Mr. Weinswig says Giant Step will have a "great year" if it posts flat revenues in 2001. The agency, whose client roster includes Maytag Corp., Philip Morris Cos. and Ralston Purina Co., generated revenues of $25.8 million last year, up 93% from 1999, according to Crain's sister publication Advertising Age.

It has been a tumultuous year so far. Giant Step co-founders Eric and Adam Heneghan, who sold a stake in the agency to Leo Burnett Co. in 1996, resigned in January. About two months later, the agency cut 52 jobs, or nearly a quarter of its workforce.

A former accountant at KPMG, Mr. Weinswig jumped to the marketing world in 1991, when he took a job with Leo Burnett Co. after getting an MBA from the University of Michigan. He joined Giant Step in 1995, leaving the following year to start the Chicago office of Eagle River Interactive Inc., a corporate Web site designer.

Mr. Weinswig returned to Burnett in 1997, working on the Motorola Inc. account, and rejoined Giant Step in 1999 as vice-president of client service and business development.

Despite the collapse of the Internet advertising market, Mr. Weinswig notes that the firm recently has picked up additional business from clients including Lexis-Nexis and Discover Financial Services.

The best thing going for Giant Step may be its roster of blue-chip clients, which are less vulnerable than dot.coms to the vagaries of the technology market, says Marissa Gluck, a senior analyst at Jupiter Media Metrix Inc. in New York.

"It's absolutely a good thing to not be overly dependent on dot.coms," she says, "but that's not a guarantee that you'll be able to grow your business."